I have always been involved in sport and training, commencing with Australian Rules Football when I was 5! When I was 13, I found a book titled Strength & Conditioning for Australian Rules Football. That was my first insight into Strength & Conditioning and the Olympic lifts. So naturally, I started performing power cleans and snatches in my bedroom with a thin barbell and those old weight plates that were made of plastic coated concrete! How I didn’t hurt myself, I’ll never know.

In 2004, whilst searching the net for how to get “FIT”, which I actually had no idea what that meant, I came across CrossFit. I lurked and ventured back and forth to crossfit.com over about 3 months before finally reading the CrossFit Journal article, “What is Fitness.” This changed everything for me. It was exactly what I had been looking for! I threw myself into CrossFit and have never looked back. I am now fitter at 38 years of age than I’ve ever been.

I got into coaching after doing CrossFit on my own in a globo-gym for a while. Like manyCrossFitters, I wouldn’t shut up about it and eventually talked a friend into letting me train her. She was my first athlete and fortunately I didn’t kill her! That led to me getting some qualifications and coaching a number of people 1-on-1 to gain experience. Then in late 2007, early 2008 I affiliated as Ultimate CrossFit Perth. I think I was about 345 in the world and the first in our state, Western Australia. I continued coaching a handful of people 1-on-1, more so as a hobby. Toward the end of 2008, a trainer who was dabbling in CrossFit approached me and that led to the creation of The Cell – Real Fitness.

I wrote a business plan, we got a bank loan and a facility and away we went. We had zero business experience but I had a clear vision for what I wanted to build. Fast forward to early 2010. I discovered this dude, John Burch, on the CrossFit message boards, which led to discovering CrossFit LA and The BIZ. I liked what I saw and knew enough to know I knew nothing and needed some direction. I purchased The BIZ materials, which at that point consisted of some CDs, and I set about implementing the contents.

In July 2010, I was heading to LA to coach an athlete at the CrossFit Games and thought it’d be great to meet John and pick his brain. So I dropped him an email and about $600!….and set up a meeting at CrossFit LA. One of the first things John asked was “What’s your Average Client Value?” I had NO idea what he was talking about. So we worked it out. Gross revenue divided by number of members. Turns out we were going ok with an ACV of about $450!! That was more than CrossFit LA! How did we have this? It was my vision to provide a world-class strength & condition service founded on the CrossFit methodology to small groups of 8 people at a time. This vision and model enabled us to charge a bit higher than the average CrossFit because athletes were getting the benefit of a group setting AND the benefit of close, personal coaching. So despite having zero business experience, we were doing ok, BUT we had no idea why.

Since that meeting, I have been personally mentored by The Burch, have bought out my business partner, have unfucked numerous things and have slowly built The Cell to a half million dollar a year business!! Our best month has been $52,000. (And, by the way, that’s with less than 150 members).

My business model has always been about less members, outstanding personal service and world-class coaching.

I have benefitted so much from The BIZ and John’s mentoring that it’s time for me to give back, help boxes get set up right, unfuck things and generally CRUSH the shit out of the competition. And with a special interest in Aussie and Kiwi affiliates, I want to help you guys adapt the BIZ materials to our market so we can DOMINATE! Let’s do this!